Written by Michael “Throwback” Roden
For two years in the late ’70s, I wrote a review column for the Bison. Although I occasionally targeted television, music and, when I was feeling particuarly brave, campus productions, the usual subject was film. For a farm kid largely raised in front of the TV, the column was an opportunity to share my pop culture views with my peers. Writing the column, along with the enduring friendships I made while on the Bison staff, was the highlight of my college years.The last movie I reviewed for the Bison was Carroll Ballard’s “The Black Stallion,” which despite its family-friendly rating, nonetheless bore the cinematography and cerebral depth of its producer, Francis Coppola. Contrast that movie with recent “family films” involving animals – “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” “Hotel For Dogs” and “Cats & Dogs 2: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore” – and you’ll get a sense of how far we’ve sunk in the last 30 years. An unfair comparison? Perhaps. Still, there’s no denying that the major studio offerings today are louder, coarser and … well, dumber … than those of the ’70s, a decade when even the G-rated films were intelligent and inspiring.Certainly, there have been great films in the ensuing three decades, including many that are on my all-time favorites list. Sam Mendes, the Coen brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson are making films that can stand alongside anything produced in the ’70s. Pixar has rejuvenated the animated genre with “Up,” “WALL-E” and the “Toy Story” trilogy. A few survivors of the ’70s era are still going strong, chief among them Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorcese and Clint Eastwood.I’ll also concede that the ’70s had its share of insipid and moronic bombs. Then again, even the B movies of the decade – be they the Burt Reynolds good ol’ boy action-comedies or the grindhouse works of Roger Corman and Crown International – have a charm and ironic innocence when viewed today.The era of “’70s films” began in 1967, when a new generation of filmmakers came of age and shook the status quo. Penn’s landmark film “Bonnie and Clyde,” along with “Cool Hand Luke,” ‘ “The Graduate” and “In the Heat of the Night,” represented a marked departure from previous norms.Movies would now make us a little uncomfortable as they force us to look at things from a different, usually outsider’s, perspective. For audiences scarred by Vietnam, assassinations and Watergate, it was a counter-culture journey they were ready to take.The primary difference between the films of today and those we think of as defining the ’70s – “Apocalypse Now,” “M*A*S*H” and “Taxi Driver” – all were made through the corporate studio system. Today, it is unlikely that any of the major studios would greenlight these authority-challenging pictures.If made at all, they would be produced independently, with cobbled-together financing, or for cable television. Indeed, some of the most intelligent writing, directing and acting has been on the small screen, including series like AMC’s “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”A few studio “prestige” films are made each year, in the hopes that Oscar nominations will generate box office juice, but they’re more like the English department that owes its funding to the Division I football team’s NCAA success.Studios no longer wanted to risk money on middle-range-budget dramas or historical epics. As a result, many great films simply go unmade. The saddest example of this may be the Jackie Robinson bio-film that Spike Lee has been pushing for 10 years. An American feel-good story made by a filmmaker seemingly born for the project – yet no studio or financial backers seem willing to take the risk. Instead, we get more films about the antics of oversexed teenagers.In 1963 four years before the revolution he is credited with starting – the prophetic Penn said of Hollywood, “As far as I can see, the place is killing itself. Pretty soon it’ll be churning out only big blockbusters and TV series. That’s all, no more actual films.” Fortunately, in between the prophecy and its fulfillment came that brief, shining moment when mainstream movies aimed for lofty artistic heights, spoke to the disenfranchised and cynical among us and ruffled some feathers along the way to immortality. I’m fortunate to have come of age during such an era, and ever the optimist, I look forward to the pendulum swinging back. If the films of the ’70s taught us anything, it’s that things never stay the same. In the words of flawed “Mad Men” protagonist Don Draper,”Change is neither good nor bad. It just is.”MICHAEL RODEN is a 1982 Harding graduate. He served as the Bison’s movie reviewer during his time at Harding.
